A number of technological systems are available to have meetings among participants not located in the same area. These systems may include video conferencing, web conferencing, or audio conferencing.
The most realistic substitute for real in-person meetings is high-end video conferencing systems. Conventional video conferencing systems comprise a number of endpoints (or terminals) communicating real-time video, audio, and/or data streams over Wide Area Networks (WANs), Local Area Networks (LANs), and/or circuit switched networks. The endpoints include one or more monitor(s), camera(s), microphone(s) and/or other data capture device(s), and a codec, which encodes and decodes outgoing and incoming streams, respectively. In addition, a centralized source, known as a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU), is used to link the multiple endpoints together. The MCU performs this linking by receiving the multimedia signals (audio, video, and/or data) from endpoint terminals over point-to-point connections, processing the received signals, and retransmitting the processed signals to selected endpoint terminals in the conference.
By using a videoconferencing system, a PowerPoint presentation or any other PC-presentation, for example, may be presented while still being able to see and hear all the other videoconferencing participants.
Another conventional means of presenting multimedia content is to stream data to computers through a web interface. The data stream may be transmitted in real-time or a play back of an archived content through a streaming server. Conventional streaming data is adapted for storage and distribution, and therefore the multimedia content is represented in a different format than for video conferencing. Therefore, to allow for streaming and archiving of a conventional video conference, a system for converting the multimedia data is needed. One example of such system is described below.
A streaming/archiving server, or content server (CS), may be provided with a network interface for connecting the server to a computer network, audio/video and presentation data interfaces for receiving conference content, a file conversion engine for converting presentation content into a standard image format for distribution, and a stream encoder for encoding the content into streaming format for distribution. The streaming/archiving server is further equipped with a streaming server for transmitting the encoded audio/video content to terminals located at nodes of the network and a web server for transmitting web pages and converted presentation content to terminals located at nodes of the network. The streaming/archiving server is also adapted to create an archive file consisting of the encoded stream data, residing at local storage media or in a server/database, to enable later on-demand distribution to requestors at remote terminals over the computer network.
As shown in FIG. 1, according to a conventional mode of operation, the conference is initiated by including the streaming/archiving server 101 as a participant in the conference. The streaming/archiving server 101 accepts or places H.323 video calls 102 as point-to-point (only one H.323 system 103/104 in the call, typically used to record training materials from a single instructor) or multipoint (2-n H.323 systems in the call via an MCU in addition to the server, typically used to stream or archive meetings).
A viewer at a remote terminal (PC_1-PC_n) can access a conference by directing a conventional web browser to an Uniform Resource Locator (URL) associated with the distribution device. After completion of validation data interchanges between the viewer and the distribution device, the viewer is able to view the personal interchange, i.e., the conversation and associated behavior, occurring between the participants at the conference presenter site, as well as view the presentation content being presented at the conference site. The multimedia content is viewed in a multiple-window user interface through the viewer web browser, with the audio/video content presented by a streaming media player, and the presentation content displayed in a separate window. When requested by the head of the conference or by the conference management system, encoded stream data is stored in a server as an identifiable file.
Users that want to either download or stream recorded conferences, as described above, access a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the streaming/archiving server, for example a web based GUI. As shown in FIG. 2, the GUI provides a list 201 of the currently stored conferences on the streaming/archiving server. The user then has to browse and/or search through the list of stored conferences looking for the one he or she wishes to view.
However, the amount of conferences stored on the streaming/archiving server increases dramatically over time and with increased use. With an increased amount of conferences come new challenges in assisting users to search and locate videos with content of interest. Conventional solutions to this problem involve the user browsing through the content to find the item of interest. This method is only feasible for servers with small collections of conferences or when locating recently recorded conferences (as they may be sorted from newest to oldest). Alternatively, conference creators can enter metadata 202 such as a brief description of the conference or keywords that describe the conference content. This enables users to locate conferences by searching for any that contain words specified in a search engine 203. However, keyword searches rely on the conference creator to manually enter the metadata 202 information. This requires a lot of manual work, and it does not guarantee that the metadata corresponds correctly to the stream data. In addition, the robustness and usefulness of the searches then depends on the verboseness and accuracy of the keywords entered by the conference creator. Further, experience has shown that users rarely take the time to change or add any metadata in their recordings/content.
Conventionally, the most common solution to this problem is to aid the user in supplying keywords. This is achieved by providing lists of broad predefined categories 204 that conference creators can choose from, that best describe the content of their conference. In addition, some automatic metrics can be utilized when browsing, such as sorting by the date and time 205 the conference was created. The problem with this approach is that there is very little metadata 202 that is automatically created. Therefore, if the conference creator does not enter additional metadata 202, the conference will not appear in any of the searches. If the content server stores a large number of conferences, browsing will not be feasible to locate the conference unless the user knows the date the conference was created.